Random Thoughts

1. Sometimes it is quite astonishing how happy a red coffee cup you bought six months ago (as a sign of new possibility) or a blue coffee mug that you bought three years ago (on a trip with your Dad) can make you. So don't be too quick to disparage silly, little purchases. 2. Or, in other words, whatever form it takes-- you can't always be a martyr, or a master, or a renouncer of the world and it likely a mistake to try. 3. That said: if there is an overwhelming message to be gained from Babette's Feast it is this: austerity and joyful abundance are far fairer partners than we often imagine.

1. I don't care how convinced I am that Revelation was a coded reference to Rome, I am not getting any microchips implanted anywhere in my body! 2. Too many people have been convinced by movies and literature that people who do evil are suave, intelligent, and cool. There is too much cognitive dissonance when buffoons are such successful purveyors of evil.  # Arendt 3. 3 months yesterday.

  1. If you are concerned with real old Biblical sin than to paraphrase Billy Graham's stump sermon-- every time you point a finger you should recognize that four are pointing back at you. If you aren't implicated in your own discourse then you aren't talking about sin you are talking about vice and it is a real short walk to naming the "other" as an inferior, vicious being.   2. God's love should be a constant irritant or you aren't paying close en ough attention. We actually don't get a free pass to hate anyone.  3. I don't think it is accidental that the word cat is found in the word catharsis.  4. I fear that I have too much in common with the Grandmother in a "Good Man is hard to find"

Random Thoughts, August 4th 1. Take it from me all you white folks who are angry about the Proctor and Gamble ad, they own everything. I learned this as a child when I was told they donate half their proceeds to the church of Satan. Have fun boycotting! (Powerful ad!--especially the Trayvon character that doesn't come home)  2. "All will be well!" --the challenge for a lapsed American evangelical is to hear this line anew without any sense that my own material success, health, or well- being is being guaranteed, and yet still fee l profoundly comforted. 3. Can't get "Lord, you have come to the lakeshore out of my head."